


Mr. Spider's Smallest Guest

by Beepun



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Gore, Graphic Description, Other, Web!Martin, canon hungry spider gets fed, martin's dad is p shitty in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:07:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23525116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beepun/pseuds/Beepun
Summary: It was a small book, the type that might be read to children for a bedtime story. Martin picked it up and frowned at the title, A Guest For Mr. Spider. He felt his body move, flipping through the pages of a story he’d lived through. First, there was a Mr. Bluebottle with cake. His blood had been the oldest, staining the walls a faded rusted brown. Then, there was a Mrs. Fruit. Martin really hoped it wasn’t the kind old woman who waved. She should have known better than to hope flowers would satisfy the beast.And then, there was his father.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 112





	Mr. Spider's Smallest Guest

**Author's Note:**

> Martin's dad is a bully in this fic, but he gets his dues. Pls be safe while reading this!
> 
> This is a 'how would web martin become a thing' type of fic, enjoy!

“It’s just a bloody walk!” His father roared, a beast in overalls and a flannel shirt. His arm flung out, sending the nearby vase shattering against the wall. That sound, the shattering, high and piercing, felt like a cold drip of fear along Martin’s spine. He’d once been pushed into the freezing river waters near his school, only knee-deep, but bone achingly cold. Hearing the sound of his father and the accompanying glass, Martin decided to make himself small.

He was rather good at it, becoming little in a way that made him almost invisible. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t be seen anymore, but when he turned in, he could ignore the household horrors and simply be at ease in the muffled plane of existence he called home. It was peaceful there, existing somewhere else. Off on a faraway adventure where he was among all things, safe. Safe. 

His bedroom door burst open, and Martin only felt that he should be afraid. Just a little, but he was still off away on the coast of some beach. It was warm, the sand was hot on his feet. Characters from his favorite show called for him to join them on a treasure hunt as a rough hand pulled him out of the room by his arm. “Let’s go, Martin.”

Martin caught sight of his mother as he was all but dragged out the door. She stood ramrod straight, hands curled into tight fists held close to her sides. She wore a light blue dress, and Martin thought it would be a good dress for the farmers market later that week. She did not look at him as the door closed. He knew better than to ask for help. 

His room had been cold. It had been chilly and cold and the blanket he wanted to be hiding under had done nothing to fend off winters frozen shadow. But it had been safe from the biting of the wind, the way it whipped and howled around him. It stung his eyes, his nose. He could feel the way the frozen air filled his lungs, and it was all he could to not to gasp. His father dragged him down the road, Martin trying his best to keep up with him without stumbling on his feet too much. The ice burned, and Martin only barely pulled himself away from the beach in his mind to realize his socks were thoroughly soaked. He hadn’t had the chance for shoes. 

He followed because that was what his father expected him to do. He knew better than to struggle, not when his father was in such a bad mood. Sure he liked to hit and throw things, but he never got too bad as long as Martin kept himself little. So he did. Even when he started shaking. Even when they’d walked so far down the road that he could the lights of the town and his feet hurt something sore. He knew his mom would get mad at the muddy shape of his socks, but maybe if he managed to hose them down before he put them to wash-

The ocean was salty. Martin wanted to focus on that instead. He’d stood on a beach once. The air had tasted of salt and water and the sky overhead was cloudy. It had been cold then too. He knew that the beaches weren’t supposed to be cold. He’d seen blue skies and fuffy white clouds - just one or two in the sky - on tv. It was supposed to be sunny and warm and the sand had hundreds of shells to be picked up into colorful buckets. 

Martin keeps walking until the sharp tug of his arm causes him to stumble. He can’t bite back a cry at the sharp pain that explodes at his shoulder and blooms down his arm. He really wishes he could go home, but he keeps his head down and begins to gnaw on his lip anxiously. His father moves him across the street, into a building with a long table and lots of other smaller tables. His father moves through the crowd of mostly men, pulling him along. He catches the eye of one man, older and frail compared to his father. He looks shocked to see him, but Martin was pulled along before anything could happen. What would happen, anyway? What could anyone do? Martin knows it’s just because he isn’t wearing a coat or shoes and he’s always been a messy crier even if he’s good at doing it silently. 

“Sit.” His father orders. Martin almost sits there on the floor, just about drops onto the ground before his father shoves him to one of the chairs at the table. He climbs up and then his father sits beside him. The place looks like a restaurant, but it smells bitter and sickly. There’s smoke and there are dim lights and Martin wants to disappear for sure. He wants to go back home.

“Your kid?” Martin looks to see a man seated in front of him. He’s got wispy blond hair and teeth the color of decay. He’s so still, sitting there with a drink in his hand that he could pass off as a statue, save for the way his eyes skitter across the room. They pass over Martin, over his father, and then back to Martin. 

“Yeah...Yeah, that’s him. Martin, say hi.” His father instructs. 

“Hello, sir,” Martin mumbles back. 

“You said you needed a kid, right?” His father sounds worried, but Martin isn’t sure about what. “W-If he’ll do, I won’t owe you any money right?” 

Desperate. Like Martin’s mother when she begs from the other side of the wall, right before the sound of a fist hitting flesh. Martin wants to be sick. He looks down at the wooden table, eyes blurring as he tries to disappear. He could run away. Not back home, not for a day or two. He doesn’t want to leave his mother. He’s done odd jobs for his father before, cleaning up vents and attics his father was too big to get into. On one particularly good day, his father had got him ice cream for his good work. One scoop vanilla. A little red candied cherry on top. 

“Yeah,” The man says, eyes scanning around again, “You just gotta drop him off someplace. Rest’ll be taken care of there.”

“You do realize how shady that is right? I’m not gonna drop off my son-”

“Nothing like that, mate. Don’t be so paranoid. Sides,” The man leaned forward, his breath foul, like milk left out for far too long. “Do you want to keep owing me, yeah?”

His father doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. Martin bites his lip to keep from crying, because he might not know a lot but knows that something very bad is going to happen. To him. So that his father no longer needs to owe the man with rotten teeth. And there’s nothing he can do about it but hope that the day after, everything will be over and he can read his favorite comic again. Or see the dog on the lawn that’s on his way to school. 

“You know the old place by the hardware shop? Room 388.” The man’s voice was a withered horrible thing. To the side of him, Martin felt his father go still. 

“Absolutely not. My old lady wouldn’t fuckin forgive that.” His father sounded mad. Martin focused on a strange greasy stain on the table. 

“Either this or” He made a strange gesture, tilting his chin in the opposite direction of them. His father turned and let out a curse. “Or that. Just go,  _ Mr. Horse _ .” 

That’s how Martin found himself being dragged across town again. He misses the restaurant as soon as they stepped out, it’s putrid air was at least warm and sheltered from the lingering snow that clung to the street. Martin hurries to keep pace with his father, every now and then he’d catch his reflection in a store window. His hair was a mess, his eyes red, and his cheeks looked splotchy. If he were older, if he were a grown man like his father, he’d like to think he’d stop someone dragging along such a miserable child. And yet, every adult who met his eyes simply looked away, his pleading gaze water to their metaphorical duck’s back. 

Martin hated them. Just for a moment. He couldn’t really blame them all either, that wouldn’t be fair. 

He was pushed and pulled along until they stood in front of an old building. Martin had seen it hundreds of times on his way to school. Sometimes, a little old lady would wave to him when she was out watering the few wildflowers that grew nearby. Martin always thought it had some old charm to it, but right now the sight of the old building felt wrong. 

He knew some buildings could be scary. He’d seen horror movies before, after all. But he didn’t know they could feel alive. The building watched them with hungry eyes in the shape of windows. He could feel his father tense, his large sweaty hand curling around his shoulder and Martin hated him for being a coward. The closer they got, step by step, the more it felt like they had never been intended for anything else. 

It was the knowledge that going into that building meant he would die. It was the knowledge that, no matter what, no matter how hard his body tried to run, he would enter that building. As they neared the door, it felt more like the building itself was edging closer to them. Was moving towards them in a slow crawl, the windows shivering in anticipation and the door yearning to let them in. 

It was fate. Easy as that. The cold threads of fate that long ago decided - long before the idea of Martin even being in the world - that he would be born simply to be feasted upon in the building older than any in town. Martin, for all eight years of him, understood that he would be dying and that this death had been the only reason he existed at all.

It felt pointless to cry, but it did not stop him. If he was going to die, he deserved a tear or two to mourn his short life. But there was no arguing nor fighting, not with the strong wire that seemed to pull him and his father into the building. 

The door was a putrid yellow. The color of a sore gone wrong. It opened for them, Martin’s father pushed him inside as though he’d even have thought to run. As though his feet weren’t stuck moving forward, the web they walked on had no exits. Had no salvation. 

The first hallway seemed normal enough. The walls moved, or maybe he imagined the way they seemed to urge them forward. Excited hands guiding a tasty morsel to the mouth. As they moved up the first flight of stairs, the stench of something sticky sweet and sick began. If Martin could have stopped, he would have fallen at the strange sight of horrid brown smears along the bottom of the hallway wall. It looked like water damage, the color faint and blooming. 

He suddenly remembered that once, when his dad was out too many days and his mother was too tired to clean, a bit of meat was left out. The red blood had browned and soured and smelled awful. It was a stench that clung to the halls. The further up they went, the darker the stained walls got. The stronger the scent of old dried blood. The stronger the urge to rush towards the center, if only to end his torment sooner. 

A strange sheen clung to the floor and made his socks feel funny as he had to peel them off the floor with every step. His father’s shoes squelched, it was the sound of rubber pulling up drying syrup. Martin, despite his horror, looked around. Taking in the hideous color of the walls and the floor and found his lingering on the many thousands of eyes staring back at him. He almost wanted to laugh. 

Spiders. Giant and tiny, fuzzy and not, thousands of them now the most normal thing about his current situation. They lined the ceiling, moving in clusters. They seemed to follow them, crawling over each other to follow along. How nice for them, he thought, dinner and a show. 

Martin spared his father a glance, and he decided he hated him most for the way he cried. He’d brought them here and then he cried like this wasn’t their fate. Like he hadn’t chosen this for them, like every action in his life had not lead them both to this strange building. What sort of debt could only be paid in blood? Did his father think Martin would be the only one to die? No, whatever was there waiting at the end of the hall would feast on them both. 

Then his father looked at him, and Martin felt that no tears on earth could ever save him. 

Where his father’s eyes hardly lingered on Martin save for the moments when they were filled with rage, now his empty eyes were locked on him. 

Martin knew, at that moment, that his father was going to do everything in his power to save himself. Even if it cost Martin his life. Especially so. That wasn’t fair, because Martin had already accepted his fate. Why did the man who had made this choice for him get to feel he’d had the final say, why did he think he would have any say at all?

Martin felt angry tears prick his eyes, so he stared up at the many legs of the spiders and felt at ease knowing they’d get to witness his father’s downfall. At least they would. 

They made their way up another flight of stairs. There was only one door at the end of the hall. A bright, obnoxious red door stood out against the splotchy vile sticky brown of the walls. The colors here were fresher. Newer. 

The air shimmered, thickened until it was something for Martin to push through. Nevermind the coward’s hand on his shoulder thinking he had a say, pretending to be brave at the cost of his son’s life. The spiders above them were an excited flutter, Martin could actually hear their many legs scattering about over one another. 

The closer they got, the louder the spiders became until they were a low hum above them. Oppressive as the silence of the first floor. It was being in a world in which they did not belong, but one which would still readily feast on them. 

Martin stood in front of the door, it’s bright color looming over him. It was the color of poison daring anyone to touch it, daring them to try and run as though they hadn’t been born into this trap. 

“Well, it is polite to knock.” The words permeated into his mind like water against the page of a book. It bled into him, his heart and mind, something booming that had always been there. He whimpered, feeling himself sob as his father raised his giant hand to knock. 

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The red door slowly crept open. There was no squeal of a door on rusty hinges. It opened smoothly. From the darkness, a figure stood, grotesque in it’s being. Martin loved spiders. They were friendly little things hated for existing and maybe they didn’t look kind, but that didn’t mean they didn’t deserve kindness. But the thing staring down at him with too-big eyes and a belly that seemed ready to pop was far too twisted to be real. Martin felt himself shake with the power of a sob tearing through him. 

“Who is it.” The voice rang out and the large hand still on his shoulder squeezed with such force that Martin heard himself cry out in pain. He looked up the beast, pleading silently to  _ please, please save me _ . At least let his death be quick, at least let this be over, he thought.

“M-Mr. Horse…” His father sobbed, his voice more a whisper, “I’ve brought my son.”

And Martin knew he was being pushed forward more than he felt the shove, more than he felt his feet leave the ground. At the same time, he heard quick footsteps rushing away, and Martin gave in to despair. 

“No!” He shouted, rushing forward to throw his hands around the thick, writhing belly of the beast with two red eyes. It smelled of blood, fresh and old and rotten. Martin wept into its coarse fur, begging for his life. Thin, black, spindly arms reached around him, out the door and into the hallway. They pulled at invisible wire strings, pulling them in as the multitude of spiders rushed into the flat with a flutter of a thousand feet. 

Martin heard screaming as his father was pulled back into the flat. For all his rage, it was always directed at the wrong person. Martin pressed himself further against the thing with too many limbs, whimpering as his father threatened to kill him. He held onto the monster as tightly as possible, burying his face against the dark fur. 

His father screamed, yelled, and cursed as the door slammed shut. There was the sound of a struggle and then a wet crunching noise that made Martin sick. He stood there, shivering as he felt the body of his father smack against him, a limp thing in too many hands. There was a wet chewing, and Martin forced himself to look up as he felt something warm and wet splatter against him.

The thing, the Spider, held his father by the shoulders. He watched strong jaws and fangs work his father’s skull into a pulp. Two other spindly arms worked rapidly wrapping him up in startlingly silver web from his feet up. Martin knew that would be his fate, that he would follow shortly in a quick and horrible death. It wasn’t fair, how filling could an eight-year-old be? But it wasn’t about being fair. It was simply fate. 

The thing rumbled, and Martin heard a heavy thump as it dropped his father’s encased body onto the floor. He looked up at the thing, the spider, and felt himself nod in acceptance. It was better than going home. How could he ever explain this to his mother? He felt himself begin to cry as he hid his face against the writhing stomach. 

A cold, spindly  _ thing _ , that he would have considered a hand reached for him, tilted his chin up until Martin was staring up at the spider. It looked down at him, the place where it’s mouth should be nothing more than a strange wet stain. Its empty eyes were bigger, hungrier. 

“M R . S P I D E R W A N T S M O R E .”

A voice boomed, a voice that had always been there and had never existed. It filled him with dread as he nodded and let himself slump against the beast. 

  
  


When Martin woke, he was back home. It was late at night, and he knew his mother was asleep because there were no lights on. She was a heavy sleeper. Martin sat up, horrified as he felt the sticky warmth of his clothes stuck to his skin. His feet were sore, they ached and burned and as he turned on the lamp, he could see browning blood on his overalls. His feet were a mess. 

Martin curled up against himself and sobbed quietly, his little hands pressed against his face. He sniffled and whimpered and felt himself start as something brushed against his hand. Looking up, he was terrified to find Mr. Spider had followed him home. Would he eat his mother, and then eat him as a snack? 

Instead, he found a giant house spider sitting on his knee. It’s two front legs patted at his arm before scurrying away towards the chimney. He watched it go. Felt the urge to squash it, and then let that go too. Mr. Spider had...not eaten him, and it was the most kindness he’d received from a stranger. Especially a man-eating beast sort of stranger.

“I won’t hurt you,” Martin vowed, his voice trembling but certain, “I won’t ever hurt you, I promise.”

He placed his hand open palm against the floor and waited for the large spider to crawl back. It skittered up his arm, across his chest, and tapped at the buckles of his bloodied clothes. Then, it rushed down back towards the chimney. Cleaning out the ash had always been Martin’s chore. His mother always was a heavy sleeper, he knew what he had to do.

That night, after burning his clothes and showering, Martin went to bed. He put Mr. Spider in an old glass fish tank. He’d put a ruler inside in case the spider wanted out, but it seemed content to stay there. And for a moment, as the spider stared at him, Martin felt safe. 

He felt wanted. Loved. 

“Thank you, thank you so much.” Martin felt tears sting his eyes and he wiped the tears away as he smiled down at it. The spider lifted two legs and skittered to a corner. 

Martin added a couple of old shells and an old fish cave for it to hide in before climbing back to bed. As he tossed the sheets aside, something landed with a sharp  _ thunk _ at his feet. He yelped, jumping back before realizing there were no monsters, no father and no mother rushing in to see what the noise was. He made his way forward, feeling again the spider’s silk around him. It was comforting, in an odd horrible way. 

It was a small book, the type that might be read to children for a bedtime story. Martin picked it up and frowned at the title,  _ A Guest For Mr. Spider _ . He felt his body move, flipping through the pages of a story he’d lived through. First, there was a Mr. Bluebottle with cake. His blood had been the oldest, staining the walls a faded rusted brown. Then, there was a Mrs. Fruit. Martin really hoped it wasn’t the kind old woman who waved. She should have known better than to hope flowers would satisfy the beast. 

And then, there was his father. Mr. Horse and his son, who had agreed to bring the monster another meal. There was an invitation for another guest on the last page, and Martin felt himself smile as he placed his hand over the door. He was so certain, he was so absolutely sure, that Mr. Spider would be fed. Just like he’d feasted on his father, Martin wanted to be sure his savior wouldn’t go hungry again. 

He placed the book by his pillow as he got comfortable in bed. Despite everything, it had been a good day. He was so lucky that it was only his feet and arm that stung and ached, and that his head was still attached to his neck. 

As he drifted to sleep, an idea popped into his head. Always there, somehow new. There was a store in town that took old books like this, and as much as Martin wanted to keep it, he knew Mr. Spider would be hungry. In the morning, he’d go donate it. 

After all, he’d already visited Mr. Spider. Something told him that he would be Mr. Spider’s smallest guest for a long time to come. 

**Author's Note:**

> Relistening to episode 081, thinking to myself, haha I don't care for web Martin....unless? 
> 
> I normally hc Martin's dad as just some shitty dude who wasn't there for most of Martin's childhood and his marriage anyways and then just fucks off. But for this fic I wanted Mr. Spider to cronch on a jerk like he did with Jon's bully. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
